An iPhone photo I took this morning after the accident. Note my gold toenail polish...

This morning I woke up with a giant cat relaxing on my chest waiting for his breakfast. I looked at my phone and saw the time was 8 a.m., and decided I would try to make the 9:30 a.m. Jivamukti class uptown at Life Yoga with my dear teacher Libby. I fed my roommate’s cat (Puch) and my other roommate’s dog (Irie), made some almond milk and then a breakfast smoothie, got my shit together and was out the door by 8:40 a.m.

It was a beautiful foggy morning in New Orleans, the sun not yet burned through the clouds. I didn’t have any time to spare, as I was planning to take a bus from downtown to uptown, and would be right on time if I was lucky. As I approached Press Street on Chartres I heard the deep bellowing horn of a train coming, and raced towards the tracks to see if I could beat it. Once I got closer I saw that it was a block away and sped up and over the tracks.

As I breezed across Press street just on the other side of the tracks I saw a silver pickup truck flying towards the intersection on my right, trying to beat the train. The thought was crossing my mind that I should watch out for speeding cars while dodging trains when I heard the truck screeching to a stop. I slowed and looked back over my shoulder to see the truck half in the intersection with a woman and her bike down in the street in front of it.

For one brief moment the thought crossed my mind that I should keep going. The truck had stopped and two men were out talking to the woman. I could still make my class. That thought was quickly replaced by compassionate concern, and I turned around and went back.

Laney's mangled bike wheel, with railroad tracks in the background

The woman was still tangled in her mangled bike, but sitting upright talking. I offered to call 911 and the driver of the car became agitated, saying he did not have insurance and offering to help her outside of the law. His friend was trying to keep the woman calm, telling her not to look at her bleeding ankles. It took me a few seconds to decide what to do, with the woman getting visibly more upset, and so I took out my phone and called 911.

While I was trying to speak to the operator over the noise of the train and the friend and a security guard who had come out of an adjacent building the driver quietly disappeared from the scene in his vehicle, leaving his friend behind to deal with the aftermath.

To his credit, the passenger stayed and helped the woman and the police, swearing and angry that his friend had put him in this predicament. It turned out that the area by the tracks was under surveillance and the security guard went in to retrieve the footage for the police.

I stayed as a witness, but also to be a friend to the woman. She was taking it all very well, speaking positively about her recent acquisition of health insurance and a car, and that these things would make her recovery more bearable.

For me, there was a deep feeling of compassion for all the people involved. I once killed a pedestrian with my car, and this has of course stuck with me all of my life. I still today do not know how much I was to blame, but I remember waiting for the police to come, a white face in a completely black neighborhood in D.C., standing next to my pickup truck while the woman’s blood formed a pool around her head. It was dark out and she had been crossing a busy street outside of the crosswalk, a bottle of liquor in her purse. I had been messing with my radio and once I looked up there was no time to stop. The white cops didn’t issue me a ticket, and instead I have lived the intervening years wondering I was presumed innocent only because of racism. I am sure that the thought of fleeing the scene had crossed my mind as well.

I could feel the emotional turmoil inside the passenger’s heart, not knowing wether to be loyal to his friend “of ten years” or to do the right thing and stay until the police came. He was cursing his friend and pacing around angrily. I thought about how my yoga practice has helped me overcome extreme anger in most situations, yet still wondered if I could have done any better.

And then of course the biker, Laney. She took it all so well, not a trace of anger showing. Looking at the bright side, keeping it all in perspective. She was young and beautiful and I wanted to hug her but I kept my space, and instead just talked to her and tried to be good company until her friend showed up to take her to the hospital.

A streetlight post fell and crushed the bike locked to it. Perhaps another driver trying to beat a train?

We talked about our jobs and my yoga project and found we had a mutual connection. We compared our toenail polish, mine gold and hers a lovely turquoise. I gave her my card and carried her to her friend’s car when the time came. “I should bake you a pie”, she said as I lowered her into the passenger seat. I said that it might be challenging since I am a vegan. “I’m vegan too!”, she said. What are the odds, in New Orleans? I told her to email me but don’t know if she ever will. The universe brings people in and out of our lives in strange ways.

We were all racing to beat the train. If I had not been a few yards in front of Laney the pickup may not have slowed down. The stop sign certainly didn’t make a difference. Perhaps my being there saved her life, perhaps not. The karma of four individuals played out into the event, and all of us left as different people.

The driver is now a fugitive, and will face the repercussions of dishonesty and self-interest. What good can possibly come for him? The passenger will have to re-evaluate his friendship. The fallout from being honest and doing what was right will undoubtedly move him towards the light. Laney has come through a difficult situation, as we all do, to repay past karma. She was such a wonderful example of keeping the mind balanced in hardship, I felt inspired standing near her radiance. I hope that as she recovers she will continue to shine.

As for me, well, I will probably still race against the train.

Things are looking up for this Pedal Person. (photo by Selena Dittberner)

I am not sure if it was the original plan, but the business quickly became centered around picking up residential trash and recycling and taking it to the Northampton Department of Public Works Transfer Center. Because Northampton doesn’t have a municipal trash and recycling pick up we have competing garbage truck companies. This is a particularly wasteful way to gather garbage. Each company travels down the same streets with giant trucks burning fossil fuel and belching toxic crap into the air as they continually stop and go picking up individual customer’s waste. The genius of Pedal People is that the same service is offered on bike, reducing the carbon footprint of residential waste removal drastically. Because Northampton is a Liberal enclave the idea really appealed to the townsfolk, and the business took off.

A photo I took of founders Alex and Ruthy back when they were getting started.

Since I was friends with Alex and Ruthy I somehow got involved as a sub early on, meaning I would occasionally cover a route for one of the actual collective members when no one from within the collective could do it. I pretty much did it once or twice a year for about five years, and only in nicer weather because I didn’t have any fancy gear to ride in the winter. Over this time I watched Pedal People grow and become hugely popular and always thought about what it would be like to do it full time. When thoughts like this came into my mind I considered the reality of New England winters and quickly ushered them out of my head.

Yet as I grew older and my vicissitudinous lifestyle etched lines of character into my personality I started to romanticize the idea of working out in the elements and becoming a bicycle activist. As fate would have it one of the Pedal People got hurt (off the job) and called me to sub. He left the collective shortly after that and offered me his routes, which he wasn’t actually allowed to do according to the collective’s procedures. This chain of events did, however, allow me to wedge my foot in the door, and since I was technically the sub with the most seniority I got to audition for the part, and somehow they allowed me to join.

Joining the collective entails nine months of apprenticeship that must include one winter. I started in August of 2008 and gradually accumulated the gear I needed as well as the muscles and endurance so that by winter I was ready to face the snow, slush, sleet and frozen diapers. People are always amazed that we do this every day no matter what the weather is like. During the winter of 2008 I think there was only one day when we called customers to postpone our pick ups. Most of us have studded snow tires on our bikes as well as all kinds of crazy clothing to deal with different situations. For me the hardest part is making sure I don’t sweat too much. With a loaded trailer and a 3 mile uphill ride to the transfer center it is easy to start sweating even on the coldest of days, and once your shit gets wet its all over as far as being comfortable is concerned.

Pedaling fast on the bike trail. (photo by Selena Dittberner)

At 42 years old, I am currently the oldest Pedal Person. I am also the newest Pedal Person because I was voted into the collective in September. I made the cut! I contribute it all to my amazing vegan diet. All you silly people who ask vegans where we get our protein can bite me, and then you will get yours. I haul some crazy heavy shit up hills and all over town. I have been vegan 14 years and I am still as strong and fit as I was when I started, and twice as good looking. I honestly don’t know how I keep so humble and modest with my multitude of qualities.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly…

There are some very conscientious customers, and there are some customers who make our jobs less enjoyable.  So much recyclable stuff ends up in the trash it is sickening. On the flip side some people will try to recycle everything, and then we are stuck picking garbage out of recycling bins. We have a contract to do the downtown trash in Northampton and it is particularly bad there. There are recycling receptacles next to almost every trash can, and inevitably people still throw their cans and bottles into the trash. That along with thousands of disposable coffee cups. At this point the Northampton landfill is almost a landfull, and we need to stop producing so much trash. At Pedal People meetings we often talk about ways to encourage people to be more conscientious about their waste, and in the near future we will be doing trash audits to help people learn ways to recycle more and produce less.

Another thing, meat stinks! It attracts maggots that completely cover some peoples trash bags by the time we get to them. We offer a composting service for vegetable waste, meat goes into a landfill. As a human and vegan activist I believe it is definitely time for us to evolve from our carnivorous ape phase and become more spiritually enlightened beings. The planet can’t sustain us all the way we are living. It takes lots of vegetation to make food out of animal flesh. The existence of factory farms calls into question the very notion that we are civilized. We are all complicit in allowing atrocity as long as they lurk in giant shadowy sheds around the country hidden from sight with their manure lagoons and animals gone completely insane from being constantly and relentlessly tortured. All to save a few dollars and for brief moments of pleasure on our tongues. The free range-organic -grass-fed-happy-meat ideal is faulty in that there isn’t enough land to support all of our billions at our current level of flesh consumption. Furthermore there are no real regulations on the use of humane labels so it boils down to being  a marketing ploy that encourages us to pay more so that we can relieve our consciences, even though many of the same inhumane practices are employed. Capitalism breeds inhumanity, same as it ever was. As far as seafood is concerned the oceans are nearly depleted of sea life, and many of the fish we like to eat take several years to reach maturity, so it is hard for them to make a comeback. We are pretty close to going over the cliff, and most of us still have our foot on the gas. Time to get off the meat-mobile and ride a bike!

Bicycle Acrobatics on the bike trail. (photo by Selena Dittberner)

In spite of these gripes I really love being a Pedal Person. Working in a cooperative has been an amazing life lesson on how a group of people with common goals can work together and achieve far more than any of us could as individuals. I encourage anyone who is starting a business and wants to contribute to a better world to consider the collective model. It ensures that workers all get treated equally and are valued. It keeps everyone honest and teaches us how to respect each other.

I love biking in the rain. I love biking in the snow. I love my big overshoes that make me look like a superhero. I love the big mass of muscles I have grown around my leg bones. It makes me feel so good that nearly every time I work some stranger will tell me how great they think the Pedal People are. I love that my job is also a form of activism, that it inspires people to think about the waste they produce and the way they commute to work. I took my own car off the road after about 5 months of being a Pedal Person. I love biking, feeling the wind around my face, flying by cars stuck in traffic, jumping curves, ringing my bike bell. It is real freedom. It keeps me in shape and makes me smile. I am one lucky bastard.

Thanks to Selena Dittberner for taking the awesome photos of me. I still owe you dinner!

A large load of trash, ready to go!

Jackie pedals through the flood (photo by The Republican)

Pedal People Ben and Myke meet on a snowy day (photo by Robin Barber)

Dumping cardboard into the recycling dumpster. Photo by Selena Dittberner.

Bringing compost to Montview Farm. Photo by Sarah Peters.

Group photo of all of us, circa November 2008. I took this with my fancy remote.

View more photos at PedalPeople.com